Aftermath of the Typewriter
by ExpandingDarkness
Summary: Post-"Breakdown" Pete depression. Myka tries to help. Pete/Myka.


A/N: Sorry if this is a little OOC at the end, it's the first REAL Pete/Myka that I've done that's emotional. Reviews and feedback is love!

* * *

The call of Myka's voice came from outside in the hall. She stood outside her partner's door after knocking several times and was prepared to kick down the door herself if Pete didn't answer within the next ten seconds.

"Pete! Open up!" Myka called for the third time, "Pete, c'mon, open the door!"

Pete Lattimer hadn't left his room all day, a first for the energetic Secret Service Agent. Myka was concerned when Pete hadn't come down for breakfast, lunch, or when she and Leena were preparing to bake a fresh batch of cookies. Usually the cookie-addict jumped at the chance to school the women in the culinary attention of the said pastry. However, he hadn't come down from his room.

Leena had confirmed that Pete was still in the bed and breakfast because the car was still in the driveway and she could sense Pete's presence upstairs. After that affirmation, Myka had made it her mission to find out where her partner was.

"Pete!"

The door opened a moment later and Pete stood there with a frown, "What?"

"Ah. . ." Myka paused for a moment, unsure as to what to say, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be okay?" Pete's frown intensified.

"You haven't come down from your room all day," Myka stated the obvious fact.

"Uh huh," Pete nodded, "I've been reading."

"Then why didn't you answer you door the first half a billion times I called for you?"

"Because I wanted to finish the chapter?" the answer sounded more like a question than a statement.

Myka studied him with an odd expression for a moment and then shook her head, "Okay then. . ." she replied with a hesitant tone of voice, "Cookies are finished baking, you coming?"

"Nah, I'm good," Pete shook his head, "Maybe later."

Then he closed the door, leaving Myka bewildered out in the corridor.

* * *

Two days later

"Pete, it's time to go! We have to get to the airport in an hour and we have a forty-five minute drive!" Myka banged on his door. There was silence on the other end, so Myka jiggled the doorknob. The door was unlocked so she went inside. On the bed, asleep, was Pete. Flabbergasted, Myka approached her partner's sleeping form. This was new. Pete was normally up and about, primed for the mission way before she was. Pete was the morning person, not her.

Glancing at Pete's alarm clock, she noticed it was still set to go off. Had Pete slept through his alarm?

"Pete!" Myka shook her partner's arm, startling him as he woke up, "Rise and shine, we have to leave in a few minutes. I don't know what happened, but you're behind and have to get dressed. Okay?"

Pete would have been harried by that announcement if it was any other day in the past, but he simply stared up at her, "'Kay."

"Are you alright, Pete? I mean, seriously alright? You haven't been. . .all here lately."

"I'm fine, Myka," Pete gave her a half-hearted smile, "Don't worry about me."

But Myka worried anyway.

* * *

One day later

Myka scrubbed the shampoo out of her hair in irritation with the low water pressure hardly helping. The plumbing of the bed and breakfast was interconnected and if there was a lot of water consumption, the other shower suffered the consequences of low pressure. Myka had waited until she thought that Pete was out of the shower to get in and that was at least half and hour ago. More likely forty-five minutes ago. Pete never took that long in the shower. It was fifteen at the very most after the dirtiest job they had had. Plus, the rule was that after dirty jobs they took turns taking showers so the water pressure would be even. This was definitely a violation of the rules they had been abiding by.

"Dammit, Pete," Myka muttered as she turned off the shower and dried off. She dressed in her undergarments and pulled a bathrobe over them. Then she left her bathroom and bedroom and went across the hall to Pete's room. His room was left unlocked once more, to her fortune, and she saw that the bathroom door was left slightly ajar and steam was emerging from the crack. Myka cautiously moved toward the door, aware that it usually wasn't a great idea to go into a man's bathroom uninvited. She entered the bathroom and was pleased that she wasn't met with a naked body. She was instead immediately when she saw Pete sitting on the side of the bathtub in his boxers with the shower still going at full blast. Myka could see the tear tracks on her partner's cheeks and her heart ached.

"Pete?"

"Myka?" Pete looked up, confused and surprised to see her there, "What are you doing in here?"

"Checking up on you," she came and sat down beside him on the edge of the bathtub, "What's going on, Pete? Don't tell me it's nothing, because it isn't just nothing."

Pete looked over at her with shining dark eyes, "I haven't felt the same since the Sylvia Plath typewriter thing. I can't seem to focus on anything and I feel so depressed. I think it may still be affecting me somehow even though I'm not close to it."

Myka nodded at what he said, "That could be possible, we still don't know the extent of the damage that thing can do."

"I just. . ." Pete hesitated, "I don't feel like living anymore, like I don't have any purpose and I don't need to be around."

"You have plenty of purpose," Myka rubbed Pete's arm gently, "You're a Warehouse agent and my partner. I need you like you need me. We're a team."

"Mrs. Frederick told me when we first met that I didn't have a life in D. C. and she was right. I left my family, my friends, I gave up everything I had for a dead-end job and nothing to show for it now."

"You have a life right here," Myka insisted, "and you have a different family now. Leena, Artie, Claudia. . .me. . ."

"Yeah, definitely you," Pete nodded, not looking at her as he said it. Myka felt her cheeks heat up for some strange reason and paused before continuing her motivational speech, "Pete, we care about you more than you'll ever know. You're like a brother to us and more than that to me."

"Really?" Pete looked over at her with a smidge of hope in his eyes.

"Yeah, really," Myka nodded in response with a small smile, "Will you let us help you through this? I'll do everything I can for you."

Pete hesitated once more before agreeing with, "It can't hurt to try."


End file.
